NPS benchmark & industry trends in 2022

“How loyal are your customers?”

This question is difficult to answer, but there is a solution to every difficulty. For this question, the best solution is the Net Promoter Score.

NPS or Net Promoter Score is a popular CX metric that various companies across the globe use to measure Customer Loyalty. The metric has been used by both B2B and B2C businesses to find how loyal their customers are. Fred Reichheld from Bain and Company developed it in 2003, and soon it gained worldwide popularity.

Now, it has become one of the most valuable and important metrics to measure Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty and know the company's market position in any industry. This article will take you through how important NPS is, how to calculate this metric, the latest NPS trends, benchmarks, and some practical ways to increase your Net Promoter Score.

How to Calculate NPS?

To find the Net Promoter Score, a simple NPS survey is sent to the customers. This survey includes one core question followed by a follow-up question. The Ultimate Question that the survey asks is:

“How likely are you to recommend this business to your friends and colleagues?”

A scale of 0 to 10 is provided to the customers to answer this question, where ten means ‘Most Likely to Recommend’ and 0 means ‘Not at all Likely to Recommend’. Based on their responses, the respondents are divided into three categories viz., Promoters, Detractors, and Passives.

Promoters - The customers that give the rating of 9 and 10 are called Promoters and are considered the most satisfied and loyal customers. They are likely to make repurchases and recommend the brand to their friends and family, thereby promoting the brand and attracting more customers to the business.

Passives - The customers that give the rating of 7 and 8 are called Passives. They are usually satisfied with the experience but have a high probability of switching to other brands if offered a better deal.

Detractors - The customers that give a rating from 0 to 6 are called Detractors. These are considered the most dissatisfied customers and are least likely to make repurchases or recommend anybody to choose the brand. They are likely to detract the other customers who are thinking of selecting the brand, which is why they are called Detractors.

The NPS Calculation is done by subtracting the percentage of promoters from the percentage of detractors. 

First, you need to find out the percentage of both promoters and detractors with the simple percentage formula. 

% Promoters = Number of Promoters/Total Number of Respondents x 100

% Detractors = Number of Detractors/Total Number of Respondents x 100

For instance, if you have 250 customers, out of which 200 responded to the NPS Survey. Among them, 100 are promoters, 50 are passives, and 50 are detractors. Here, your NPS will be calculated like this:

% Promoters = 100/200 x 100 = 50

% Detractors =   50/200 x 100 = 25

So, your Net Promoters Score will be:

NPS = % Promoters - % Detractors = 50-25 = 25

Why is the Net Promoter Score Important?

Net Promoter Score is a great way to know how much your customers liked the experience you provided them. It is a user-friendly metric that you can easily adapt to gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty. NPS is a great way to start if you want to make your brand customer-friendly and follow the best practices that satisfy your customers to the maximum.

The Ultimate Question asked in the NPS Surveys is a one-in-all question that tells everything in short. It is based on a simple concept that customers will recommend something to their friends and known ones only when they are themselves happy with its experience. Researches suggest that around 96% of the customers who are very happy with the customer experience return to the brand to make repurchases and recommend others to choose the brand.  

When customers are willing to recommend you, that means they love you. On the other hand, if they are not likely to recommend you, this tells you that you need to pay serious attention to their feedback and do whatever it takes to improve their experience. Moreover, it is one of the best ways to measure Customer Loyalty in quantitative terms. It gives you the digits to know how much you are able to satisfy your customers and how much you need to work more to improve their overall experience.

NPS tells you the position of your company in the market. It guides you whether you are on the right track taking you towards growth, or you are missing out on something. With NPS results, you can ascertain the near future of your brand and work accordingly. It acts as a guideline to carry on or improve your business.

With the follow-up question of NPS asking the reason for the customers’ rating, you can easily know the strengths and weaknesses of the business. You get a clear picture of what aspects make your promoters become promoters and what elements make some of your customers become detractors. With the responses to the follow-up question of NPS, you get to know the areas of improvement and the aspects or features that you should not change.

Moreover, it helps you to estimate and build a word-of-mouth market. Researches suggest that suggestions from friends and known ones are critical influencers to buying decisions of 74% of customers. When you get to know who is willing to recommend you, you get a good estimate of your customers shortly. Also, when you work on improving your NPS, it ultimately increases your word-of-mouth marketing, thereby adding more customers to your business.

So, we can say that measuring NPS is vital in every aspect. Along with measuring Customer Loyalty and Satisfaction, it helps you know where your business stands in the market and compare your position with your competitors, guides you to make product developments and improvements, and take the right action on Customer Feedback to close the feedback loop and prevent churn. Let’s explore the latest trends in Net Promoter Score.

Net Promoter Score Trends 2022

NPS Surveys are of two types: Relationship NPS Surveys and Transactional NPS Surveys. The primary difference between them is the time of sending these surveys. Relationship surveys are sent at fixed intervals like monthly, quarterly, or annual surveys. On the other hand, Transactional Surveys are sent whenever a transaction, event, or customer interaction occurs.

Years back, Relationship NPS Surveys were usually used to gauge the overall Customer Experience. But now, the trend has been shifted more towards Transactional NPS Surveys. In 2022, most businesses focus on measuring NPS at every touchpoint of the customer journey.

They use effective NPS Survey Software to trigger NPS Surveys with every interaction or event like a purchase, a bill payment, cart abandonment, after a customer interaction with service agents, and any significant event in the customer journey. The idea is to cover every aspect of business and know the strong and weak points of the business.

Relying solely on Relationship NPS Surveys can fetch you incomplete data as the case may be that the overall Relationship NPS is high, but at one point, customers become so dissatisfied that they decide not to recommend the brand to any other person. This can be an issue that your customer care executives could not resolve, an interaction that did not end on a good note, a feature that customers didn't like, or anything that affects the customer experience adversely.

So, the better approach and latest trend in 2022 is to use Transactional NPS Surveys to gauge CX at every touchpoint and work on the weak points to improve Customer Experience and increase loyalty.

Net Promoter Score Benchmark by Industry

Net Promoter Score can lie between -100 to 100. If we talk about a good NPS score, anything above 0 is generally considered a good NPS because it means that you have more promoters than detractors. On the other hand, NPS below 0 is regarded as a bad NPS score as it means that you have more detractors defaming you in the market than the promoters promoting your brand. 

But we can’t ignore the fact that detractors are louder than promoters, and a negative word of mouth spreads more rapidly than a positive one. So you cannot just sit back and relax when you get a positive Net Promoter Score. So what is the way to judge your Net Promoter Score?

For this, you should consider both the global NPS Standards as well as your industry standards. As per the Global NPS standards, any score above 50 is regarded as an excellent NPS Score, and if you reach 70 or above, this means you are doing great business. However, consider the average NPS of your industry while judging your score to be good or bad.

Moreover, if you want to set up the right benchmarks, along with the average NPS of your industry and the global NPS standards, also consider your previous NPS and ensure that your NPS improves every time.

How to Increase your NPS Score?

The best use of the Net Promoter Score is to improve it by utilizing the valuable information to improve Customer Experience. But this is not a one-day process, it is a continuous process and all your teams and employees have to work collectively to achieve your target score. 

It requires a well-planned strategy and appropriate actions at the organizational level to enhance satisfaction and loyalty, and thus improve your NPS. Here are some steps and aspects to focus on:

1. Define Clear Goals

Define your goals clearly and make it clear to every team in your organization to work towards achieving that goal. Your ultimate goal is to improve NPS but there can be different and multiple sets of goals that you should specify to your teams. Your goals can be to enhance customer support, improve products or their features, provide the best services, or work on any aspect that impacts customer experience and ultimately your NPS.

2. Listen to the Voice of the Customers

Gather Customer Feedback at every touchpoint and see what your customers want to convey. Welcome their suggestions and try to follow them. Listen to their issues and complaints and work proactively on them to give a smooth and fast experience. 

3. Follow up with NPS Respondents effectively

Collecting customer feedback or NPS ratings is useless if you don't follow up on the responses or work on the feedback so collected. Segment your data and respondents, and follow with them separately according to their responses. 

Thank the promoters for their appreciation, ask passives what you can do better for them, apologize to the detractors for their bad experience and ask them where things went wrong. Take action on their concerns as soon as possible and do what you can to the best extent to improve their experience.

4. Track and improve your NPS over time

It is ideal in 2022 to send Transactional NPS surveys, but at the same time, it is a good idea to send Relationship NPS Surveys also after a specific interval of time. You can send annual surveys to track the NPS for every year and ensure that it doesn’t go down, instead of improving with time.

You can also track Transactional NPS with respect to various aspects of your business and ensure that the NPS for your weak points is improving.

5. Use NPS to train your employees and improve their performance

Use your Net Promoter Score at various touchpoints to train your employees. You can appreciate your employees who deliver a great customer experience of shopping or interaction. Similarly, if you receive a bad NPS with respect to a specific interaction, you can train the employees associated with that interaction about the weak points and how to improve them.

Conclusion

Net Promoter Score is a great way to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction and gauge the overall experience. With time, the trend of measuring NPS has been shifted from measuring Relationship NPS after a specific time interval to measuring Transactional NPS with every transaction or interaction at various touchpoints of the customer journey.

Setting NPS Benchmarks is somewhat complex as there is no specific benchmark of NPS except the global standards that are valid to only a certain extent. To set the right benchmarks, you should take into consideration the average NPS of your particular industry, and also keep track of your previous NPS to ensure that it improves with time.